Leave Facebook alone; forget about your privacy
July 17, 2009 · By Charles Anthony
The typically lazy Canadian practice of demanding the iron fists of bureaucrats to settle our inter-personal problems is being passed on from one generation to the next. These absurd demands of the federal privacy commission to protect personal information from being mined by third-party applications are nonsense. We may as well blame Microsoft for every single phishing attack that occurs on the internet.
Oh, well. Poor Facebook. I guess they have to learn old adages the hard way. If you play with fire, you get burned and what goes around, comes around.
AFTERTHOUGHTS:
Commonly, we hear the refrain that with freedom comes more responsibility. In a pragmatic sense, that has to be true. Being free today is nothing like what it meant a generation ago. The information age is exploding rapidly and we are in an extra-ordinary transition where young people are learning a new concept of freedom. Occasionally, they learn this the hard way. It is impossible to police all of this nonsense.
It is sad that these University of Ottawa Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic students look at the internet — a technological advance that offers more freedom, educational opportunities and excitement that no other generation has ever imagined — as a media that must be controlled, limited or regulated by the police.
Limitations upon Facebook or any other entertainment media are unnecessary and it is most certainly unfair to expect the tax-payer to fund the arbitration of these frivolous disputes. If you do not like Facebook do not use it. If you want privacy, do not publish your personal information to the entire world.
It is impossible to police all of the nonsense on the internet. If we set a precedent of doing so, the work for the Privacy Commissioner will soon become endless and overwhelming to the point where we will need more bureaucrats than tax-paying income earners. I wonder whether anybody with clout will pass judgement upon this new development. This is most definitely a step backwards in civilization.
http://westernstandard.ca/webs.....hp?id=3007
It is not a left-wing position to state that third-party applications need a bit more policing:
Facebook sez, “Don’t mind us, we’re just whoring out your photos”:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2.....ur-photos/
They should, indeed, get everyone’s back. Sites like Facebook are for mature and responsible people. If someone is too dumb to use sites like these (e.g., the wife of the MI6 boss), then everything that happens is their fault and they shouldn’t blame anyone else.
Besides, this case is yet another example of undue government influence on private enterprise and for this reason alone must be rejected and opposed.
more bureaucracy, more tax dollars, more state intrusion. perhaps i should just get on with compiling all the sites that i currently visit now and get it over with eh.
seriously, just what is this intrusion in the name of today? security of person, national security, illegal activity, or just plain old fashioned information gathering in a post 9 11 society. BTW i do consider national security and post 9 11 different because national security would be legitimate should you or i be the type who has bin laden on your facebook page. post 9 11 we have given up so many rights freely to what i consider an overstated and overreaction to terrorist threats that i feel government as a whole has come to view invasion of privacy as something normal instead of viewing it as the threat that it really is.
Hey, I’m not a fan of getting government to solve all our problems, but they absolutely SHOULD intervene when an individual or company is breaking the law.
PIPEDA is unambiguous regarding the treatment of personal information, and the law protects ordinary citizens, even if it doesn’t go far enough.
For years I have been telling people Facebook is breaking the law, good to have someone in an official capacity finally looking into it.
I disagree. I do not think that is good. I think that is bad because it is a waste of tax-payer’s money.